The Joe Biden administration is “likely” to have violated the first Amendment of the US Constitution, a federal judge has reportedly said – as he temporarily banned White House officials from meeting with tech companies to discuss social media censorship.
Louisiana Judge Terry A Doughty issued the injunction in response to recent lawsuits from Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general. The lawsuits claim that the White House coerced or “significantly encourage[d]” tech companies to suppress free speech during the Covid1-9 pandemic.
Judge Doughty has now banned White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, some of Biden’s Cabinet members and a number of other federal officials and agencies from contacting social media companies to suppress speech. The law suit specifically named tech giants Google, Meta (Facebook) and Twitter.
The injunction has been obtained by Fox news. It reportedly states that the Biden government’s actions “likely violate the Free Speech Clause” and that the court “is not persuaded by Defendants’ arguments.”
In the injunction, Judge Doughty said: “During the Covid-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’
“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.
“In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”
The injunction notes that the alleged censorship “almost exclusively targeted conservative speech,” but it says that the issues raised by the case are “beyond party lines.”
“Viewpoint discrimination is an especially egregious form of content discrimination,” said Judge Doughty. “The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”
Fox News said the Department of Justice declined to comment on the injunction and that the White House, Google, Meta and Twitter are yet to respond to requests for a comment.
